Simon Bridges: Political stillbirth or something entirely different?

The above is a
quote from Gustave Flaubert and could be paraphrased to New Zealand Journalism
as One becomes a political reporter when
one cannot be a politician.

Political
journalism in NZ is going through a dull patch at the moment or to be more
precise; with no scandal to feed the media, many political reporters have been
reduced to reporting on mundane political occurrences or, even worse, writing
speculative “think pieces”.

This is ugly journalism at its worst and it shows how the high drama of the political
campaign can twist and warp a reporters mind so that they get lost in the glare
of personality politics and forget that outside of the campaign, trail politics
is not actually about grandstanding political egos (think Winston Peters),
personal events (think Jacinda’s baby) or petty political nit-picking (ala all
the recent focus on Simon Bridges).

And in the wind up
to the recent National Party conference in Auckland the two remaining
mainstream outlets in the political media went, what could be politely termed,
into overdrive, spewing out page after page of low wattage drivel about
Bridges, his leadership prospects, his hairline, his gel quota, his family, his
background and absolutely anything but the actual problems afflicting the
National Party.

Such star focused
reporting shows exactly why political reporters need to be conversant in the Three P's of Politics (Principles, Policy and Personality) rather than just
their relentless focus on personality, which is fine for the campaign trail but
becomes all but irrelevant once the election is won (or lost) and government
and opposition settle down to the day to day of Policy and, on those rare
moments when the planets align, Principles.

Its simple stuff
really, yet we are still getting articles speculating about Bridges fate as
leader or Mike Hoskings sponsored BS about how well the party is doing. Worse
still is the kind of bland spin via David Cormack who really needs to just stop
writing these suck up articles like some overgrown teacher’s pet (in this case
the teacher being Labour) and stick to being the self-confessed “PR guy” role
that he refers to himself as. And for the love of sweet baby Jesus take that
horrible picture of yourself out of all those articles you write, you look like a
total creep.

And finally, it’s
clear that the sun has well and truly set on Bryce Edwards as political
commentator. Bryce, sweetheart, trolling the internet and for stories and then
presenting a rather over worded list of other people’s work as your own is
shallow beyond belief. Just stop, please, or at least write something original
because in reality the problem with National is NOT Simon Bridges or his
leadership (the Personality part of the three P’s) but rather the other two
(Policy and Principles).

Even veteran
reporters like Audrey Young of the NZ Herald and Tracy Watkins (as noted above)
have, at times, been sucked down to this level of verbal diarrhea with catchy headlines
and little else beyond to pad out their articles. It’s as if the respective
editors of Stuff and the Herald ordered their staff to write about the upcoming
National Party conference but the star struck reporters simply could not
conceive of anything beyond the same campaign style reportage (with its relentless focus on the negative and the personal) that they were
turning out during the election campaign last year.

There are
exceptions to this mess with Henry Cooke from Stuff and the Spinoff (despite
the disaster of its “hipster TV” channel) being very conspicuous exceptions to
the poor state of the general political media by producing ongoing quality
assessments of the situation in NZ politics.

However I am 500
words in and I would be no better than Bryce if I was to keep on with this
line of analysis rather than getting to the question at hand: that being the
question posed in this posts title, but I would be remiss if I did not at least
pause a moment to consider why political reportage in NZ is so often the kind
of knee jerk tabloid muckraking akin to the gossip magazines at worst or, on a
good day, barely pedestrian factual reportage without a hint of in-depth
analysis.

But journalism,
like life, has posed a question to which there is no single answer (much like
why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near or why side A of Marc
Jacobs Mannequinis just so damn good
or the answer to life the universe and everything is 42 but what’s the question?)
however if I was pressed to consider NZ political reporters as a whole I would
simply say that most of them are far too close to their sources and as focus too much on the human/personal element of politics and thus become so tainted with the foul stench of politics* that they can’t be too critical
lest they piss off their sources and loose access.**

So what is the
problem with Simon Bridges at this time and place in NZ politics? The Answer:
Nothing, nothing at all and if you don't believe me, check out Liam Hehir from Stuff.

What kind of P is Simon smoking?

Bridges, as I noted
a few months back, has the hardest job in politics as the leader of the loosing party in the wake of government change election and that job has been made
harder by a number of factors which relate back to the Policy and Principles
aspects of the Three P’s rather than the Personality factor.

First up for
Bridges is that he was picked for a role which, in the wake of the dark magic
of John Key, is not really tenable because expecting Simon bridges to have the
superstar polling of John Key is just not realistic and highlights that even
the National Party is desperately trying to ignore its failing in policy and
principle by pumping up the personality factor to the Nth degree.

Problem is, John
Key and his Teflon personality was an anomaly in NZ politics but it’s easy to
see how and why so many have tried to follow the trail he blazed but instead got
shot down in a screaming mess of ugly revelations and piss poor polling (think
Labours endless run of dip-stick leaders prior to Jacinda) because Key used his
magnetic polling skills to keep the party afloat when it was otherwise
politically bankrupt and hollowed out in both the principles and policy areas.

Yes Bridges is
still in single digit polling and yes Bill English was higher BUT outside of an
election and definitively in the wake of Jacindamania the last thing Bridges
needs to worry about is how high he is on the preferred PM stakes.

Instead the fact
that the party still holds a solid core of political support should be more
than enough to settle any questions about how well the party is doing when the
grim fact is that the tide is going out on National as a party after nine years
in power and it’s going to be spending some time in opposition before the body
politic decides it’s safe to trust it again (or more accurately Labour pisses
it off enough) to let it back into power.

However that’s not
to say that Bridges has not made some mistakes in his time as leader and its
here that Bridges will have to up his game if he wants to stay in the job to
see another party conference (in 2019) as leader.

Making National your bitch!

First up there is
the fact that when Simon got the role from Bill English he did little to stamp
his own mark on the party or more importantly his caucus. And super-duper
mistakerino number one was the fact that he kept Paula Bennett as his deputy.
Yes it was a nod to the old guard Gang of Five (Bennett, Brownlee, Smith, Joyce
and Collins) (now four) in National that had monopolised the top spots in the
previous government are now little more than tainted vessels (and that is
me being extremely polite) and horrid reminders of
what National is all about and why people should vote Labour.

Paula Bennett has
clearly gotten the memo from Nationals image team to dress less like an on the
make suburban housewife and more like a politician because she has ditched most
of the god awful outfits she used to wear in favour of more sombre attire
(think darker less bedazzled clothing and you get the picture) and a
conservative hairdo but clearly did not get the memo on overusing the spray tan
or behaving like a cast member from the Jersey Shore (given her behaviour in
and out of the House) which clearly shows that beneath the jazzed up hair,
clothes and makeup is a smouldering harpy ready to start screeching the moment
someone upsets her wine cooler or says something catty.

The net result is
that Bennett is now the Snooki LaValle of NZ politics with an image of someone
who is a vapid attention seeker and nothing more than a simulation of human
being rather a genuine person and as 2IC for Bridges Bennett should be the one
getting the MPs into line and whipping up policy teams to be an effective
opposition but she is not and Labour has had an almost free ride since getting
elected despite an increasing stream of issues which it (and not National) have
created or curated.

And replacing Bennett
is easy; just add Amy Adams! Yes folks, if Bridges wants to strut the stage
like John Key he needs an effective second fiddle (ala Bill English) to manage
the numbers and keep things in the back office ruining smoothly and Adams is
proven go getter in this area so having her playing second banana to Bridges
would be a lot closer to recapturing the JK magic than just sending a younger,
more ethnic, lookalike of John Key out into the glare of the footlights in the
hope that the audience won’t see it’s just a roadie in a wig.

Sure Adams is a
potential rival to the throne but, just like Key was clever enough to keep Bill
English close by giving him the Deputy spot he was also smart enough to realise
that English’s ambition (while not that of an actual leader) was perfect for
being his right hand man (or just The
Hand if you are a GOT fan). The result was that Key was free to be Key
while English was in charge of the day to day and while it often pains me to
say it English was very good as the power behind the throne (emphasis painfully
mine).

So if Bridges was
to ditch Bennett and promote Adams then he has at least a strong approximation
of the Key situation and can focus on getting his personal popularity up
(something that will be more important as the election approaches) without having
to worry about what his minions are doing.

The STDs of the National party

As for the rest of
the gang of four; Brownleee just needs to be demoted to the backbenches as he
is no longer effective in his role as flack catcher for National as he is now
just as controversial as any issue he is sent into distract from (Brownlee
might poll in his Ilam electorate*3 but he is still the most hated man in
Christchurch for his role in fucking up the Christchurch rebuild and allowing
corruption, nepotism and dodgy behaviours to flourish in the wake of the
quake); Smith needs to be disinfected and strategically shaven before being
made to work as the mop boy in Wellington sex dungeon.

Which just leaves
jolly Judith Collins, who is more of a risk to remove, but could probably be
useful as a productive shadow minister or perhaps as the leader of the
conservative splinter faction that some in National think is the answer to its
problems but needs to be kept on a short leash and kept busy guarding the
perimeter, like the good attack dog she is, and not left to fomenting her own
limited dreams of being leader, which if were to come to fruition would split
the party down the middle.

Getting rid of
these human dumpster fires is an essential prerequisite for Bridges getting the
party back on track and if he can’t do that then there is no phase two (or
three) to any plan to win the next election or be an effective opposition
because these malingering cyphers do nothing but take up space and block more
productive MPs from rising in the ranks. Bridges
needs to cull and he needs to cull now. He has given these monsters a
grace period after the leadership challenge and now it’s time to build a new
team, in his image and stop relying on these decrepit throwbacks to another
age.

The gang of five
have been like STDs to the National party, disgusting reminders of a dirty moment
of pleasure that they will now carry with them for life, like luggage!

If Bridges can sort
the wheat from the chaff then he will have a new team and be able to spend the
next two years working hard as the opposition party and rebuilding the policy
and principle planks that the party desperately needs to go back into government.
However there is just one problem with that and it’s that National scarified
its policy and principles in the 1990s to the gods of economic “progress” and
outsourced the work (how ironic) to the pro business goons at the Business
Roundtable (now the pro-business goons at the New Zealand Initiative).

Surfing the zeitgeist

“But what’s the
problem!” I hear you cry, whacking the side of the monitor in anger at the
sheer lunacy of the suggestion that we don’t run our country on a pro-business
model that exploits the many for the benefit of a small few and has lead this
country to have things like a housing hernia, dirty dairy and a low wage, cheap
labour economy.

The problem,
Henrietta, is that Nationals current crop of policy plans around things like
Marijuana, smaller classrooms and more of the same hands off business practices
are not really going to address the problems that NZ faces today or in the
future and, in fact, are a big part of the problems that helped get Labour
elected (by saying they had solutions to those problems).

So National needs
to step back and genuinely consider if it can win an election by proposing more
of the same (as it has done for the last 30 years) or like medical marijuana,
pandering to what is essentially an emotional issue and not one that actually
has any relevance to the direction of the country. Smaller classes and medical
dope are easy things to say and sound good but one requires a major investment
in our educational infrastructure and the other is simply addressing a long
standing reality that many Kiwis smoke dope. Neither of these will win an
election.

Thus if truly
wanting to be seen as credible in the policy stakes National will have to come
up with workable solutions to Housing, Health and Wages rather than some quick
and easy feel good side shows (like marijuana) while the main issues keep on
messing up the country and as National helped to create those messes Bridges,
if still leader, is going to have to front for his party’s part in making those
messes.

Imagine if this
were to occur in a time when Labour still can’t say sorry for the Great
Betrayal. Bridges could tap into the national mea culpa, swallow his pride and
that of his party and reinvent National to align with the zeitgeist rather than
stand in stark isolation to it. National has stolen Labours political thunder
before and the best way to out Jacinda Jacinda is by acknowledging that
National lost the last election (instead of a continually petulant atmosphere
of a sore looser) and going forward rather than holding onto the John Key
stained past.

Coming out of the Conservative closet

Also Simon Bridges
could retain much of his conservative base by realizing that conservative
voters care about things like the environment too. It’s a cross party issue and
it’s not the only cross party issue out there where National could steal a
march on Labour by changing tack on all and any broad based issues such as
wages, the environment, land sales, water and health and in doing so show the
public that everything will not be viewed through the lens of the market place.

So instead of
having to desperately try and make eyes across the house at the Greens in the
hope of a political one night stand in order to temporarily boost his and the
parties credibility (which is what this medical marijuana things appears to be
about) he can just be real about why it’s important not to piss away the environment
because we know that after a torrid night between the political sheets the
horror and shame of the morning after would probably see nothing more than a
few more evenings of angry sex between the two parties before the whole thing
would fizzle out and neither would be able to speak to the other or make eye
contact again.

And as much as
Simon Bridges would like a savage night of passionate man on man action with
James Shaw (perhaps as some sort of delayed hysterical reaction to his strict
religious upbringing) to get the party fortunes kick started it is unlikely to
work as Nationals previous flings with the Maori and United Future showed that
National is only interested in getting its own rocks off and not willing to get
down on its knees or even give a reach around to the party that it is currently
bare backing into oblivion. So Shaw would be a fool to let a couple of wines in
the hot tub one evening destroy him and his political party*4.

National is not
going to save the day by sticking to an ideological platform that runs counter
to the majority of Kiwis so while I can see why medical marijuana has now come
on the agenda for the party the scope of conservative kiwi views and opinions
is broader than that and open to be redefined if a new generation of
conservative politicians leading the party.

Stop picking on Simon!

By getting rid of
the dead wood National could potentially revitalize its principles and the
natural flow on from that is an energized policy perspective as the Neo Liberal
ideology that National stubbornly clings to has been so thoroughly discredited
(thank you FukYoo politix) and hollowed out the party that there are no fresh
seeds in which to plant into voters minds.

A fresh approach
would inject more capital into what is currently a politically bankrupt party
that is going to meander in the wilderness for more than a single term if it
can’t embrace change.

And none of this
has anything to do with Simon Bridges because he is a fresh face in the party,
so to speak. He was not very prominent under John Key and has not been around
long enough to give off the evil vibes that the Gang of Five does.

In fact I would go
so far to say the problem with National is anything but Simon Bridges (as I said at the start) or at
worst Bridges is the least of the party’s worries. I think National has the
common sense not to try and roll Bridges before the next election but for Simon to be “match fit” for the next election he needs to use the next two
years to get his team into shape and up to speed and that requires some new
players in the front row and some new plays in the playbook.

So let’s get the
hell away from this endless fascination with The Leader (or in Jacindas case her baby) and focus on Politics and
specifically the Policy and Principles aspects, you know the things that
actually matter.

*-To recreate this
smell take one part used baby diaper, one part fridge full of rotting food and
one part sewage farm.

**-And if you guys
don’t like that you can start by writing a better standard of article

*3-The same
electorate where I currently reside

*4-actually I take
that back, Shaw is just the kind of political mercenary to sell his party down
the river given how he behaved prior to the election

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Itsa me!

Political pyromaniac; born again democrat; satirical connotator; fascist anarchist; relaxed conservative; focused liberal; consumer of truth, witch-hunter general of lies and putter of the praxis into perfect!